Patents on hole layout patterns

[hans]

I've come across a website where it is claimed that the hole layout pattern ("tone hole network") for the flutes and whistles advertised is patented. How can that be? What constitutes a patentable pattern? There are so many variables which need to be right in order to get an in-tune instrument. Would not any variation in any one of them fall outside the patent? I have no desire to copy anyone's design, I was just a bit alarmed that apparently a patent exists covering a particular tone hole pattern. I have not read the patent description, don't know where to look or write to ask. Does it make sense to have one's own tone hole patterns patented? Is it possible at all?

[JackCampin]

You mean this?

http://www.lopatinflutes.com/articles.htm

It's much easier to register a patent than defend it if challenged. People who've patented perpetual motion machines or the wheel are not going to collect on it.

Doesn't the Paetzold square bass recorder have square or rectangular tone holes? That's been in production for 25 years, and I think the basic idea is from Alec Loretto in 1973. Lopatin would have a hard time claiming originality.

[Casey Burns]

Can you send a link?

These days they try to patent everything, including almost the air we breath, the human genome, plant DNA, etc. So I am not surprised. Trademarks are another thing and I am expecting some idiot who thinks he's brilliant will eventually hassle me over the term "Folk Flute". My trademark would be "The Folk Flute by Casey Burns" which they couldn't trademark legally, since I've already used this on my labels and have dated documentation not to mention the name. I can't trademark the term "Folk Flute" however and have already seen a few of the younger makers use this term for their flutes, though tentatively (I suppose they want to avoid my wrath. My feeling about this is that this term isn't sacred). If some of the other makers wanted to use "Folk Flute" to sell their flutes, I can't prevent them. It may not be the best business decision on their part however!

My guess is that this layout pattern is for the modern flute world. Also, it would probably be easy to find that it was done before, and thus is in the public domain.

Tony Bingham has a book on musical patents (I have a copy around here somewhere). Its interesting on the first read and then you will never look at it again. I haven't looked at it since and haven't a clue if I still have this or gave it away. There was some pretty weird stuff in there. If I still have it, it will go into the box for Powell's Book Store in Portland, unless someone here wants it badly. I'll keep an eye out for it.

If someone tried to patent the widely used bores developed by Rudall or Boosey, they would have a hard time defending their patent. I would still use them and point out that mine had microscopic differences and different scratch patterns. Unless the entire concept of "tapered bore flute" was the patent. Then I would simply say that they stuffed a Tapir up there, along with a wild pig and that that idea was what made their patent so special. Note that Rudall never patented his bores. Key systems were another matter. This is where the turf battles were fought, with opposing camps. Boehm sort of reminds me of Obama or Kucinich, whereas Rockstro seems more like the Glenn Beck of the 19th century flute world.

[ Political stuff edited. - Mod ]

In my spare time I am an antinuclear activist and even got arrested once. I worked hard to block spent fuel storage, and was part of the team that prevented 4-5 new plants from being built here, as well as contributing to the demise of the Trojan plant north of Portland due to its geologic siting. They built it on a thrust fault. I'll tell that whole story another time - but consider that Matt Groening of "The Simpson's" fame named his nuclear plant operator "C. M. Burns". My middle name is from my Scottish heritage, as I am a Maclean of Duart (though my dad misspelled it McLain on my birth certificate). Matt was a friend of friends at the next high school over, same class year as me. I may have bumped into him at a party once and rubbed him the wrong way. I have no way of knowing and our primary friend link just passed away unfortunately. But I hope this is how it happened. I also like to end my letters of protest to the NRC signed "C, M. Burns". Some day I will have an article in the popular antinuclear press about our 1970s struggles.

My wife used to work in the environmental cleanup sciences. She and her team developed a method of getting rid of underground diesel plumes by drilling wells and injecting fluids full of nutrients and microbes in a process called "Bioremediation". She and the consulting firm she worked for was doing this for a local large Seattle airplane manufacturer who shall not be named here. Well, she went to this big conference in Washington DC once and gave her paper on the process they invented and tweaked that was well received. It was a big success.

Just afterwards a lawyer from Dupont approached her and warned her that they had patented all "Bioremediation". She said "Oh Really?" She took his card and said that her company's lawyer would get back to him and the Dupont lawyers about this. The lawyer didn't realize who she ultimately represented. I suspect he got a call from the head lawyers of this big airplane manufacturer and had to drop it.

Casey

[hans]

I read it here ("the patented Educci-scale"):
http://www.educci.de/gb_idee.html
and on the pdf fingering chart ("Das eigens entwickelte patentierte Tonlochnetz)")
http://www.educci.de/downloads/educci_g ... in%20G.pdf

On the fingering chart you can see the hole layout pattern, which suggests a thumb hole opposite the first left hand finger hole. That creates a rather odd fingering sequence for e, f and f# (on a G instrument) [B, C and C# in D whistle notation]. Perhaps that was patented? Obviously the idea of a thumb hole is not new, and the location of the thumb hole also varied through history and folk culture.

[Thomas-Hastay]

You can avoid all Patent trouble by shifting any offending toneholes left or right a nanometer or two. This will not affect tone but helps to compensate for differing finger lengths. Another thing to ponder...patents only last 1 year, the patentee must renew or it becomes public domain. Design diagram copywrites are worse, they last the writer's lifetime + 25 years.

[Casey Burns]

I suspect his Patent is nothing but fluff and there really is no such patent. I could simply call my Folk Flutes the "Patented Folk Flute" using the "Patented Casey Burns Scale" and I think I would stay out of trouble, though this would be a bald faced lie. I don't see anything on his Quena-derived instrument that would be patentable. He probably tried to patent the Incas as well! Or maybe his lawyers sued the citizens of Macchu Picchu out of existence.....

[kkrell]

You can avoid all Patent trouble by shifting any offending toneholes left or right a nanometer or two. This will not affect tone but helps to compensate for differing finger lengths. Another thing to ponder...patents only last 1 year, the patentee must renew or it becomes public domain. Design diagram copywrites are worse, they last the writer's lifetime + 25 years.

U.S. Patent Law grants a patent term of 17 years.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/patent/35uscs154.html

[MTGuru]

I think I've told this before ... When I was working on translation software, we were once served with a patent infringement notice (and demand for payment, of course) from someone who had patented the concept of "a database of words in one language with translations of those words in another language". In other words, a bilingual dictionary. Apparently, a few millennia of prior art hadn't convinced some patent examiner that this idea wasn't patentable.

Fortunately, this greedy huckster made the mistake of trying to extort my conterparts at Microsoft at the same time as hitting us up (and a few others). Needless to say, he ended up regretting his error.

My impression is that the patent system is dysfunctional and overburdened enough today that anyone can probably patent anything. And the legal sums to be made in challenging, defending and extorting improperly granted patents means this is not likely to change anytime soon. In the end, it's the big boys who can afford this as part of the cost of doing business, and the little guys who lose. So what else is new?

[Brigitte]

Have had some surfing time first time in weeks and thought this was quite interesting and surprising read that tone hole patterns are patented, so checked if I could find the patent writing and what it was all about, especially as Colin is doing different tone hole patterns for musicians for "ages" and never thought this could become a problem with some existing patents or other kind of protections. Anyways here is an information about it, in German though http://www.patent-de.com/pdf/DE20216745U1.pdf but I hope it can give an idea. I also had to check on what a Gebrauchsmuster is, shame on me as I should know this... so here the English Wiki-information what it is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_model, it is also called the little brother of patent, I presume it is less strict to receive approvals than full patents.

Greetings
Brigitte

[highwood]

Educci classes will be very protctive for the teachers ear and sound wonderfully homogeniously.

Perhaps someone needs a proofreader!
(quote is from one of the links from earlier in the thread.)

[killthemessenger]

The patented Educci scale is quite interesting - a half-way house between whistle and recorder fingering (from the F up in the G instrument fingering chart he provides). I don't know why anyone would patent such a thing - the market for yet another fingering system is surely rather limited.

[david_h]

A bit of Googling supports my memory that a mathematical equation cannot be patented but an application of the equation can (not sure what jurisdiction(s) though). I think the resonant frequency of a tube with a hole in the side is an equation. I suspect that the resonant frequency of a tube with several holes in it and a fipple on one end may also be a rather complicated equation. If so is calling such a thing a whistle an application of that equation ?